Re: [boost] Bjam outside Boost tree

Subject: Re: [boost] Bjam outside Boost tree
From: Steven Watanabe (watanabesj_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-10-06 13:00:37

AMDG

Jean-Louis Leroy wrote:
> After more hours on this I still cannot make it work.
>
> I have tried again from scratch. I have unpacked the 1.40 distro in 
> \temp and built boost.filesystem from within the boost tree (it's the 
> project I used as a template for rdb). It builds ok. Then I copied 
> libs\filesystem to \temp and created an empty Jamroot and a 
> boost-build.jam in its root dir, containing:
>
>     boost-build C:/TEMP/boost_1_40_0/tools/build/v2 ;
>
> This is coherent with the post I found on the internet, with Steve's 
> recommandations, and 
> http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_40_0/doc/html/bbv2/reference.html
>
> However when I try bjam from \temp\filesystem\build I get the message: 
> rule boost-install unknown in module Jamfile</C:/TEMP/filesystem/build>
>
> I put my boost-build.jam at the top of the boost tree and tried again 
> building from inside the tree with `bjam -d+5`. It built ok and I 
> could see in the log that my boost-build.jam was picked:
>
> jambase.c:72:>> local boost-build-files = 
> C:\TEMP\boost_1_40_0\boost-build.jam
> jambase.c:75:>> set .boost-build-file = 
> C:\TEMP\boost_1_40_0\boost-build.jam
>
> ...so it looks like the content is correct. Then I sought where the 
> boost-install rule pops into existence. This seems to happen here:
>
> C:/TEMP/boost_1_40_0/tools/build/v2/kernel\modules.jam:170:>>>>|>>>>|>>>>|>>>>|>>>> 
> local rules = using import project constant path-constant use-project 
> build-project explicit glob glob-tree conditional option 
> handle-static-runtime libraries-to-install tag make-unversioned-links 
> boost-install
>
> Examining `modules.jam` suggests that a bunch of build rules are 
> dynamically extracted from all the libs in the tree and boost-install 
> is one of them.

boost-install is defined in the boost Jamroot.  I had forgotten that 
libraries with
separate source use boost-install.  It isn't really used for anything.  
I'm not sure
that it will work correctly outside the boost tree, so you can safely 
define it
in your Jamroot to do nothing.

> So at this point my understanding is that there are two things going 
> on: getting bjam to work - it seems to be dynamic in part, it locates 
> and loads "a" build system ; Steve told me how to make that part work. 
> The second thing is to use it to build a /boost lib/ with its 
> dependencies (in my case the test harness) from elsewhere. In fact my 
> initial post should have been entitled "Boost lib outside Boost tree", 
> and not merely "Bjam outside...".
>
> Is this picture correct? Does any of the lib authors ever build from 
> outside a boost tree?

In Christ,
Steven Watanabe